The Need for Readily Accessible Inspirational Sacred Texts in Classical African Spiritualities: Inspiring Short Overviews of Yoruba Origin Orisa Spirituality: A Few Words

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

            The Need for Readily Accessible Inspirational Sacred Texts in Classical African Spiritualities

                                       Inspiring Short Overviews of Yoruba Origin Orisa Spirituality

                                                                       A Few Words

                                                         Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                          Compcros

                                                  Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                 ''Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge''

 

 

One of the great ways of developing and spreading a spiritual tradition is through texts, particularly written texts, a culture in which classical African spiritualities are still far behind spiritualities that emerged from those cultures which cultivated widespread writing.

A lot of published texts exist from the Yoruba origin Orisha tradition, one of the better textualized of classical African spiritualities. Yet, even this tradition suggests the problems involved in this subject.  

If I want inspiration during a difficult time, which of these texts should I go to?

Can I use any of them for reflection and inspiration the way one would use the Bible?

Perhaps the best known texts in the Orisha tradition are ese ifa, literature  of the Ifa system of knowledge and divination.

Ese ifa, however, demonstrates broad variety in content and literary power.

For now, I present a list of some of the best examples known to me of short, perennially elevating overviews of Orisa spirituality.


1. Wole Soyinka's seven stanza poem first published as part of his essay ''The Credo of Being and Nothingness'', and later republished as The Signposts of Existence.

The best very short summation of the Orisa tradition known to me. Comparable in power to the world's great scriptures and philosophical texts. Expressively lucid and ideationally sublime.

2. ''Obatala: Ifa and the Chief of the Spirit of the White Cloth'' by Awo Falokun Fatunmbi. A superb summation of Orisa cosmology in terms of nature, spiritual and physical. Luminous and soaring in expression and ideas given further concreteness  and evocative force in correlating Orisa ideas with those of scientific cosmology.

Deity Images

3. Shloma Rosenberg on the supreme creator Olorun at his site Mystic Curio. Magnificent in imagistic explication. Short and memorable.

4.  ''Eshu, Paradox''( my own title)  anthologized in Jack Mapanaje and Landeg White's  Oral Poetry from Africa and posted at their online site. Magnificently paradoxical poetry expressed in dazzling imagery. 

This poem is better appreciated through such an overview of Eshu such as Toyin Falola's introduction to his edited Esu:Yoruba God, Power and the  Imaginative Frontiers .

The interpretive possibilities of this poem are immense, as demonstrated by Abiola Irele's interpretation of the poem in ''The African Scholar'' and my expansion of Irele's interpretation in ''Abiola Irele at the Intersection of Disciplines.''

5. ''Obatala'' in Yoruba Poetry, edited by Ulli Beier. Marked by images memorable, naturalistic and elevated. This poem is better appreciated through Beier's commentary in The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger.

[Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth]

   toyin thanks for the information..useful resources

augustine

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